Monitoring Discharge in Vegetated Floodplains: A Case Study of the Piave River

Abstract

The accurate assessment of discharge in vegetated floodplains during floods is a persistent challenge in river engineering due to the difficulty of acquiring hydraulic data, the variability in vegetation roughness, and the limitations of on-site vegetation characterization. This study introduces a novel approach that combines the continuous slope-area method with LiDAR-derived vegetation data and water depths measured with piezoresistive sensors to evaluate floodplain discharges while considering variations in roughness coefficients induced by arboreal vegetation. We apply this approach to a specific reach of the Piave River in Italy using data collected during the December 2020 flood event. The study demonstrates the capability of the employed measurement system to record extreme floods and emphasizes the importance of including vegetation roughness variations in floodplain discharge calculations. The proposed approach has the potential to be applied in similar scenarios, providing valuable insights for floodplain discharge estimation in vegetated areas.